


Unspoken

by veus



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:00:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29060934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veus/pseuds/veus
Summary: The exile meets her soulmate on Peragus; she knows him from the name upon her skin. She has anticipated this moment for years, but Atton Rand doesn't seem to care.(soulmate au)
Relationships: Female Jedi Exile/Atton "Jaq" Rand, The Jedi Exile/Atton "Jaq" Rand
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Unspoken

“Atton. Atton Rand,” says the man in the force cage. Something about the name resonates with her, but only in the hazy, distant way that reaching out to the Force once more had. “I'd shake your hand, but—”

“Do we know each other?” Cela asks, peering through the shifting barrier of the cage between them with a frown. His face is that of a stranger, she's sure, but his name—his name just sounds... important.

“I'm flattered,” Atton says, and only now does she realize she'd murmured her thoughts aloud. “Now, can you tell that to the guys in charge? Maybe that’ll get them to let me out.”

✧

With an energy shield in her hands, and Atton's voice in her ear, she remembers who he is.

“Got all that, Jedi?” Atton says over the comm, ignorant of the realization that has washed over her and frozen her to the spot. “...Jedi?”

“Y-yes,” Cela says, breaking free of her thoughts, and back into life. “Yes, I have it.”

“Good. You're going to need it if you're going to get us out of here alive,” he says. “Somehow.”

She should have realized it earlier. She's traced the name upon her heart countless times, let the words echo within her mind as she wondered when, and how, and who. She can't believe that it had slipped from her memory when they had met; the sedatives must have made her mind more sluggish than she thought.

Cela activates the comm to speak—but hesitates in its ambient crackle. She's found him, but this is not the time or place; she needs to stay focused, as does he.

“Your comm stuck?” He asks. “Or just testing the buttons?”

Though he jests, Atton clearly sounds tense, and she shakes her head free of lingering, sentimental thoughts.

“It's nothing,” she says. But, unable to resist, she signs off with, “Cela Pace, out.”

✧

Back in the communications hub, all Atton catches is, “It's no—th—. C— —ce, out.” 

“Jedi?” He asks. No response, but the display shows she’s started moving again—she’s fine.

“Peragus equipment,” he grouses, when the static of the terminal has died back down. “Must be the interference.”

✧

With Peragus behind them, and Telos ahead, Cela finds herself alone with Atton once more. She's given him her name—he _must_ know who she is—and yet he appears so unfazed, as though her existence does not mean much to him at all.

She's not sure what to say.

“Are we on course?” Cela asks.

“Yeah,” Atton says. “If you want, you can check that map back there, see where we are.”

The words are recited and dismissive, like he's flown for many an impatient passenger before. She's not making a very good impression.

As she stands there longer still, unwilling to just leave him but unsure how to act, Atton turns in his seat with a puzzled glance back.

“Something up?” Atton asks. “It's still a while to Telos—you might as well get some rest. _I_ would.”

Yes—he must be tired, and here she is, waiting like some hopeful, idealistic padawan, for him to be glad to have found her. Gathering what energy she has left, she manages a smile.

“Of course,” Cela says. Her smile wavers, but lucky for her, he has already turned away.

✧

She carries trouble everywhere she goes, these days. After a glance to make sure Kreia has stepped safely out of her deactivated force cage, and helping Bao-Dur exit his, she turns finally to Atton.

“Are you alright?” Cela asks. She extends a hand to him, which he ignores, preferring to pick himself off the floor of the cage alone. He almost stumbles a little as he steps out, and on reflex, she tries to catch him.

“Woah! I'm _fine_ ,” Atton says. His hands are up, almost defensive—though after a look at her face, he relaxes with a huff. “Just a little on edge from the ambush.”

He doesn't _look_ fine. He looks disoriented, and troubled, beyond that. But it's more than she can voice, especially after the way he'd taken that hasty step back to dodge her, as though her touch were poisonous.

“How did things go with the Jedi here?” Atton asks. “Are you all done?”

“Yes. We have to leave, immediately.”

“Things went that well, huh?” He says. “You make friends wherever you go, don't you?”

It's not like this, usually. But then again, she's been alone for a long time. If she thinks back... yes, when she had her friends, she had her rivals, too. When she acts, she meets opposition—and when she approaches her soulmate, she finds disinterest. Leave it to her to have always been so consistent.

“Well, nothing like a steady stream of people who hate us or want to kill us to keep the heart pumping,” Atton says.

“You can go,” Cela finds herself saying, against the tightness in her throat. The wound in her heart aches, but she is used to it now, and cannot see the point of trying to lessen the pain much more. “You've done enough, Atton. If you want, you can go.”

In the background, Kreia shifts, and Atton puts on a silly grin.

“Nah. I was just complaining,” Atton says. He chuckles, giving her the warmest look she has ever seen from him; basking in it feels like the warm sunlight of her childhood, from hazy memories of a family she was instructed to forget.

“Really?” Cela says, faint. If she had had her doubts before, they are gone now: he is the one meant for her.

“Yeah,” he says. “I'm with you until things start going better for you.”

Her sunlight shatters.

“We need to stick together, you know?” Atton continues, oblivious, as the cold promise of that one word, _until_ , echoes and drowns the rest of her hope out. “And who knows... I might be able to help you out of a tight spot at some point.”

She doesn't know what she expected. She turns from him, ignoring the confused look he gives her when she dismisses him so abruptly.

“Thanks,” says Cela, hollow. “Let's go.”

✧

“ _You're_ laughing at me?” Atton says indignantly, throwing his words at the smug T3 unit shaking with simulated laughter before him. “I'll put you on the scrap heap, you walking tin can!”

The droid trundles away. Atton crosses his arms with a huff, leaning back against the jamb between the hold and the hallway.

“Fine, I don't need your answer,” Atton cedes at length, as Bao-Dur shows no signs of looking up from his work. “Just tell me one thing?”

Bao-Dur sighs, long-suffering.

“What is it?”

Atton hesitates, playing back the way they'd left things at the academy. Before their capture, his Jedi had been doing fine, but after it, she'd just gone cold. He recognizes the sharp cut of her emotion then, the same way he remembers the name of the one destined for him, faded to a dead gray at the pulse point on his wrist.

“Her soulmate,” Atton says. “Do you know if...”

“If you're asking that, you're more serious than I thought,” Bao-Dur says. “But no, I don't know. How would I?”

“You're right,” says Atton distantly, as Bao-Dur returns to work. “...I'm just a little out of it, today.”

✧

_I'm as Atton as Atton will ever be._

As deep and as dark as his other secrets were, this—the most innocent—is the one she cannot shake. She supposes she's overestimated herself, hearing so many confessions from him in so little time. She finds herself, once again, tired: of remembering, of knowing, of being.

She takes a breath. One piece of the puzzle at a time, she thinks. Her hand comes to her heart, but rather than linger there wistfully as it had in years past, she finds herself gripping the cloth of her robes tight within her fist.

How foolish she was, to have held his name in her heart for so long. To have held hope past the answer every record and roster had shown her: that no living _Atton Rand_ exists.

To find that he is an invention— _to find that he has hunted Jedi_ —

No, not yet.

_To find that he must utterly, truly hate her._

Yes, there is the first point on her list. To mourn, the way she had not let herself after Telos. The rest of his secrets, and his request, can wait.

✧

She trains him. She can do nothing but.

“All right,” says Atton, picking up the lightsaber she has lent him once more. “But I tell you, I think you're carrying this teacher thing too far.”

“You address me as Jedi, I will treat you as such,” Cela says. “If you want to be more familiar, call me by my name.”

“No need for that,” Atton says quickly, just a little too fast compared to his earlier words. If she didn't know better, she'd say he looked a little sheepish—embarrassed, even. “I'll take whatever you've got.”

So would she, she's found. Despite the promise she'd tried to make herself—that outside of combat, outside of training, they were to be little more than strangers—she keeps letting Atton back in.

Though he doesn't love her, he feels bound by his debt not to leave her; this is a motivation that she can understand. If she could be heartless, she would push him to leave—but for once, selfishness and selflessness align themselves together, and she can only let him stay.

She directs him, imparting on an old technique, one she knows he'll find useful. Inside, silently, she both dreads and anticipates the promise of his _“until”._

✧

“Because you'll be right here with me, playing pazaak, where they can't reach you.”

She hates the way her voice sticks in her throat, unable to say anything as he deals their next game. She watches the cards emerge between them, placed one by one by Atton's steady hand, until the colors of their hands blur as the sight of the world wobbles before her eyes.

“Your move, Jedi,” she hears him say. Then, “Jedi?”

“Say my name,” Cela says. She cannot even face him now, too scared to blink. “Please, say it, just once. I need to hear it from you.”

Perhaps, if Atton says it now, she can live off this memory for the rest of her life. It is as Kreia says: events are drawing her to their center. Soon, he will part ways with her, and she will know him no more.

“Uh, Jedi, I...”

“Do you hate me so much that you've struck my name from your heart?” Sadness turns to anger; Cela lets herself feel it. “You must know it, or I am truly unfortunate. You must, or the Force has taken its revenge for Malachor on me from the moment I was born.”

“I really don't—” Atton stops short, panic filling his eyes when he sees the look on her face. “Don't, don't cry. What did I do? What should I do to fix it?”

“Acknowledge _your soulmate_.”

Atton looks thoroughly confused now, beyond anything he could fake.

“My—My soulmate? She has nothing to do with anything, anymore. She died, before I even got to meet her.” He hesitates for only a second, and adds, “Like yours did.”

“Like mine?” Cela says. Her tears have fallen, cool on her cheek, but the emotion that had summoned them has vanished. “My soulmate is alive. As is yours.”

Atton gives a sharp little laugh, paired with a bitter smile.

“No, I remember it well. I remember, she died with...” His expression slackens, as the realization dawns on him. “...With Malachor V.”

His eyes meet hers. And here, at last, Atton says her name, with more breathless reverence than she could ever have imagined—not as a child, missing the warmth of home; as a padawan, collecting her dreams for the future; as an exile, hoping beyond hope that her soulmate would accept all that she is, and all that she has done. He says her name, and he holds her face in his hands, looking upon her, at last, as something precious.

“Cela,” he says. “Cela Pace. Why didn't you tell me?”

No—she's not going to let him place this whole mishap on her. She flips the question back to him.

“We have traveled together for so long, now,” Cela says. “The others, they might not use my name, but they know it. Why didn't you?”

“I... I don't know. I never caught it,” Atton says, “And you never said it. By the time I thought I'd just ask you for it, you seemed to hate me—I didn't want to ruin my chances.”

“...But I did say it,” Cela says. “On Peragus, in the mining tunnels.”

Atton smacks his face with his hand. “That damn interference!”

A laugh escapes her, light and breathless, because after the range of emotion she’s experienced, joy might as well be the one that comes next.

She pulls his hand from his face; he lets her, and then their gazes linger. She hasn’t allowed herself to truly look at him since she first thought she’d received his rejection, and she’d never known the neutral gray of his eyes could appear so warm.

“Can I see it?”

In the silence of Atton’s puzzled expression, Cela realizes the words had been her own. She stumbles, dropping her gaze from his, and finishes, “My name... where it's written.”

“You have it,” Atton says. His hand is still in her grasp; he turns his palm up. “It's under the leather.”

She takes hold of the edges of his glove, to pull it gently off.

“Let me do it,” Atton says, as he watches her move so carefully. In one movement, he tugs the glove away; his head is ducked, as though to focus on the action, but the tips of his ears are pink. “You don’t have to be so gentle. It's not like I’m—well. Here.”

There, on his bare wrist, lies her name. He returns it to her, and she runs a fingertip over the text, so similar to her own. Sure enough, her name is dead—but she is more captivated by how it is _real._

Atton rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, embarrassed.

“Don't tell me you believe what they say about the locations of these things,” Atton says.

“What?” She's never heard of this before. “What do they say?”

“For me, they'd say some nonsense about how I'd do anything for you, and—well, you know.” Always one to shift the subject away from himself, Atton lifts his gaze to hers. “Can I see it, too—my name?”

“Ye—no,” Cela amends quickly, once she realizes what that would entail.

“No?” Echoes Atton, obviously disappointed. Then he sees where her hand lays, over her chest. “Oh _._ ”

“Your name is upon my heart,” Cela says, apparently nervous enough as to say something so obvious. Atton just nods, face pinker than she remembers it, and she asks, “What... what would they say about that?”

“J-just—uh, something about how you love,” he says, conveniently skipping over what it is, although it’s clear that despite himself he’s touched. “That's all it is, really. Endless ways of describing love. That's what makes it so meaningless. I mean, ultimately they're just trying to spot patterns out of data that's all just random to begin with.”

“I see,” Cela says, amused by watching him ramble along. She smiles. “You have much more to say about soulmate marks than I would've thought.”

Atton merely shrugs.

“Just stuff I heard, a long time ago. Kids are sneaky little things, you know—they absorb a lot more than you might think,” Atton says. He continues, a little distant, “But then you grow up, and you realize there’s no point in thinking about soulmates anymore. It's a big galaxy. The chances are slim.”

He closes his gloveless hand, pressing the underside of his wrist against his thigh to hide it. Atton seems to take the action without really registering it, no longer meeting her eye.

“I never looked for you,” Atton says. “Not once. Even after Malachor, when I realized I missed my chance, I never made the effort to find out who you could’ve been.”

With a forced laugh, Atton gives her a weak smile. “Who knew you had been so close? Do you think I could’ve run up to you, back then? Would you have taken me?”

“I don’t know. You weren’t Atton then—though I’m sure I would’ve given you a chance,” Cela says, with a teasing smile. Atton, surprisingly, does not tease her back.

“Not Atton?” He says. “Then—is that how I’m written? Atton Rand?”

“Of course. I have never known you by another name.”

Atton’s lips take on an uncertain curve; he looks like he needs to be convinced. Cela grasps the edge of the wrap of her inner robes, wondering if this weren't a moment in which modesty should be brushed aside, but before she pulls it so much as a centimeter aside, Atton stops her with a word.

“No need. I believe you—I was just surprised.” To himself, she hears him add, “I don’t think you know how you look to me right now.”

“How is that?” Cela asks. Atton’s resulting expression clearly says he hadn’t expected her to hear that.

“You know those.... Well, you know...” Atton strings her along in suspense until he finally relents, “In those “forbidden Jedi” love stories—”

“In _what?!_ ” Cela says, barely able to contain her surprise, as Atton splutters, “Don’t laugh!”

“And don’t ask,” Atton continues, very seriously. “It used to be a popular genre, it’s not like I could’ve escaped it if I wanted to.”

“Of course not,” Cela reassures. Then, “So I am your forbidden Jedi.”

“Don’t start,” Atton groans.

“Am I meant to pull you close even as my words push you away?”

“Cela, come on—”

“Atton,” she says at last, all mirth in her voice lost, “...Say my name again.”

Atton looks at her, abandoning the defensive posture he’d adopted to endure her teasing. “Just your name?”

“I have been “the Jedi” to you for so long. I wish to be myself.”

“Cela,” Atton says, more warmly and more familiar than he had the first time. She wraps it up and stores it away in her heart, used to keeping memories as though they are numbered, but he’s not done. “Is that what you thought?”

He reaches out to her, taking her hand; she can see, upon the curve of his wrist, the glimpse of her name once more.

“You haven’t been just “the Jedi” to me since the moment I loved you.”

“You love me?” Cela says faintly, barely able to believe her ears.

“From the moment I first saw you.”

She feels close to crying again. She had been practical, when they resolved their misunderstanding—she had thought she would ask nothing of him, give him time, and simply hope quietly that one day their feelings would align.

“Not again,” Atton jokes, though his voice trembles, as though he’s feeling close to crying himself. “I won’t know what to do.”

“It’s alright,” she says, closing the distance between them. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I draw and write over on [tumblr](https://sovonight.tumblr.com/)! I've got more ship stuff there


End file.
